Hi all, A guy at my office left the company. As I was searching and cleaning his desk I found these coins this morning. If you would like to take a shot on identification then you are more than welcomed! Thanks!
Hi all, A guy at my office left the company. As I was searching and cleaning his desk I found these coins this morning. If you would like to take a shot on identification then you are more than welcomed! Thanks! View attachment 572109 View attachment 572110
Japanese coins, someone must have done a trip to Japan in the past. They appear to all be Showa era coins, ie from the reign of Hirohito.
It's a set of Japanese coins. These are worth a bit in face value - at 1 USD for 115 yen (depending on the day of exchange rate), they add up very quickly. Sure you can't just change them at money exchanger but if someone is going to Japan, you can sell it to them. I don't think any of them are worth than face value - only the really recent coins are (because of low mintage figures) as well as the reeded edge 10 yen and old script 5 yen.
Also, I have heard from a Japanese friend that it is good luck if you wear a 5 yen coin (the two bronze-colored ones with a round center hole) on a necklace. (The necklace threads conveniently through the center hole.) So maybe those are worth more than face value (about 5 cents US) as jewelry material.
I've been fighting with my Krause catalog trying to figure these out. I came across about 2 dozen of these on my vacation in a bulk purchase. Some had a long issue run and I cannot for the life of me pinpoint the dates. Nice find though.
One of the recent Krause paper editions (2015) managed to leave out a whole section of modern Japanese coins. On the plus side they sent me a PDF AND postedthe missing pages on Amazon (where I'd left an unomplimentary initial review). That might be the Krause problem. If it's a date reading problem there are a few places on the interwebs that explain it. Or, post a pix (or pm me) and someone can give a date for you. http://www.starcityhomer.com/reading-japanese-coins.html
Use this: ...and just know how Chinese-characters display two-digit numerals: "10 3" is "13 and "3 10" is 30 and "3 10 3" is "33" And then translate "Japanese era" to Gregorian-calendar dates: I remember my birth year is "Showa 45" (1970). And I go from there. Dates change again with your coins in 1989, when Hirohito (Showa) died, and begin the numbering system again with Akihito's reign each year after that.
